White House efforts to negotiate with centrist Senate Republicans on a budget deal have also broken down.

The White House and congressional Republicans even seem incapable of agreeing to fund the government for the next 10 weeks.

A foreign policy win could help Obama regain momentum on his domestic agenda.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released last week showed the president’s approval rating on foreign policy at 47 percent — one of the lowest points of his presidency. That has created a drag on the president’s overall approval rating, which is at its lowest point in more than a year.

Critics say that Iran could be flirting with talks with the U.S. as a stalling tactic.

So might Syria’s government, where President Bashar Assad has promised to give up his chemical weapons. Obama hopes to secure another foreign policy victory there.

Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, called progress in talks there “qualitatively different from anything we’ve ever seen before.” But, she cautioned, that meant “not a probability, but a possibility of a deal.”

Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, said he “wouldn’t hold my breath” on a deal with Iran that enabled full international monitoring of its weapons programs and restored diplomatic ties.

“But it would be a historic event — one of the great diplomatic coups of recent memory,” he said.